Throughout the world, many people clean their clothes by hand washing with soap and/or detergent. A preferred form of cleansing product for hand washing of clothes is the laundry bar.
Soap, as it is typically produced from natural raw materials, has a relatively high level of water associated with it. Laundry bars which incorporate soap as the sole or predominant surfactant in them typically also contain a relatively high level of water. This high water level makes such laundry bars somewhat soft.
Consumers of laundry bars generally desire a very firm bar, to permit the bar to be rubbed vigorously across the surface of clothes in a scrubbing action without excessively abrading material from the surface of the bar. The drying of excess water from the soap raw material is costly, and often undesirable regarding the manufacturing process used to make the bars. Drying of excess water from the finished laundry bars is time consuming and costly when bars are manufactured on a large scale. Consequently, consumers often choose to unwrap newly purchased laundry bars, and set them out for long periods of time to dry and become more firm.
It is an object of the subject invention to provide laundry bars, in which the surfactant is at least half soap, the remainder being alkylbenzene sulfonate, with good firmness.
It is a further object of the subject invention to provide such bars with a good balance of cleansing power and mildness to the user's skin.
It is also an object of the subject invention to provide processes for making such laundry bars.